


Of Noticing Things and Shedding Tears

by Sombraline



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Asgardian Tony Stark, Flirting, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 21:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20414758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sombraline/pseuds/Sombraline
Summary: “I'm not supposed to drink with commoners. You could be trying to poison me,” Loki remarked seriously, though Tony was starting to know him well enough to be pretty sure that one bit was just a joke. He did seem to hesitate about sitting, though.“And yet, you and I live dangerously,” he replied. “I'll let you open the bottle.”“The poison could be in the cup.”“You can examine either the bottle or the cup. Not both. Embrace the danger.”





	Of Noticing Things and Shedding Tears

**Author's Note:**

> BEHOLD! My first Frostiron Bingo entry. This is for square B3 on my card. Prompt is revealed in the endnotes. 
> 
> This was supposed to be short and relatively deep, but it ended up lasting 9K and being silly and cute. Loki and Tony just don't care about your plans. They're doing their things and you're just working the keyboard. 
> 
> Hope you'll like it!

Honestly, to work in the great forge of the palace had never been Tony's life goal. It was a boring job, full of orchestrated routines and boring tasks being repeated again and again. One forger made hilts for the swords of young soldiers. One forger made arrow heads. One forger carried buckets of coals in and out. It was always the same. It was a job, not an art, and Tony Stark, a young man of a thousand years of life, wasn't ready to sign into the slow death of moonday to friggday schedules and complimental leather aprons.

But, ah. The pay was great and the work easy. It was the quickest way to save up some gold and make another attempt, hopefully more successful than the first two, at opening his own business. Hel, if he could endure fifty years on the job and refrain from spending all of his pay on mead and recreating the comfort he had known in Haward's hall, he could probably afford a storefront in the very castle market and sell his pieces the price they were worth.

For Tony was the best freaking forger of Asgard, and all he needed was for others to know it.

He was young, sure. He hadn't been an apprentice to the dwarves of Nidavellir and he didn't know the magical runes that the elves attached to their blades. He was hoping to get to that eventually, when he would have the time and the gold. And it was infuriating to think of all the years he could have spent perfecting his craft, too, if his father hadn't been adamant on pretending that forging was for commoners. But even without any of that, Tony was a natural at creating the best pieces in the fire of even the most humble of forges.

It was a gift. He could turn the most uninteresting moon-steel ore into a dagger with an edge so sharp it could cut a falling flower in pieces. His maces and axes were always perfectly balanced, the polishing of his blades so careful they could be used as mirrors. But most importantly, Tony was a master of armors. A single look at a man's standing shape was enough for him to create an armor that fit more perfectly than any clothes. He had won his apprenticeship with the palace's smiths because of the intricate designs that ornated his pieces, but the truth was that nobody could pretend to make pieces more perfectly fitting into an ensemble than he did. His armors were thin as a second skin and mighty as powerful shields. And when he was rich enough to have his own shop, the most powerful men in Asgard would fight for the privilege of wearing them.

That was the plan, anyway. If he managed not to go mad, making rows and rows of ornemental horns for the royal guard's helms, before that.

The mightiness of his boredom, nevertheless, was occasionally brought down by a few factors. While he was usually under the “supervision” of an absolute idiot inaptly named Justin Hammer-Master and could only do his job for fear of the other bilge-snipe brained fool losing his cool, it happened often enough that Hammer would give himself an off day, usually to try and flirt with the ladies who were sewing the leather in the workshop next door. Those (hopeless) escapades meant Tony was all by himself with the forge, and while stupid horns were cooling in the oil, there was nobody to stop him from working on a few side projects, picking up discarded pieces of metal and melting them all over again into small little wonders that made him feel like he was doing _something_. 

It was one of these days when Tony met the Snake Prince for the first time. Hammer had done a barely symbolic tour of the workshop in the morning before running off to fix his pathetic little beard, leaving him alone with the task of sticking the horns into the helms and completing the batch for the training of the new recruits. It was boring work, but it meant Tony had the time to work on his latest little work of art: a small dagger that promised to be as gorgeous as it would be deadly. He had inspired himself with the dragonfang a Valkyrie had left to be sharpened by someone with more experience and less skill than he. The blade he was creating would not have the mystical, magic absorbing power held in the tusks of wild celestial dragons, of course; he didn't have that kind of budget and nobody left that kind of material to waste in the shop. But it would be a very nice blade, nevertheless. 

The helms were cooling on the bench, and he was hammering at the curved blade, when he heard a voice coming from the main entrance to the shop. It was time for lunch break and everyone had gone out, which he hadn't noticed until the rare silence had been broken anew. He gave a small groan, hoping nobody would come to try and socialize with him. It wasn't that the others forgers weren't  _kind_ , it was just that Tony had much better things to do than make  _friends_ .

That, and, you know, he wasn't really good at it either. Now that people weren't attracted to his father's money. Which was progress, because he hadn't been able to stand those trying to use him for their own status, yeah. He was totally fine with being alone now. It was a choice.

He did hear a single voice, though. Somebody talking to themselves? He kept bringing down the hammer onto the dagger-to-be. Silence followed. And then _he_ was standing at his door.

Now, Tony didn't care so much for the big royalty. He couldn't give them his weapons -that was aiming too high and he didn't like the thought of looking like a boot-licker. They couldn't do anything for him, and it wasn't like he was going to meet the mighty Thor anytime soon, working in the forges, far below the castle. To be fair, he hadn't even given a single thought to being in the same building as the royal family since he had been hired.

Which was why it was an even bigger shock when someone cleared their throat, and he looked up, ready to be annoyed, and _Prince Loki_ was standing there in all his pale and dark glory.

“Hello,” said the apparition. “Are you alone?”

His voice was lower and more articulate than expected, gentle yet more noble than any of the prestigious guests in Haward's castle had ever been. Tony had imagined he would speak with the same booming, commanding, regal tone as his father and brother. To be fair, he couldn't remember if he had ever heard the younger prince speak in public.

It took him a few seconds to realise the words had been a question, too. He straightened up, feeling very stupid, and very confused.

“Aye,” he answered, unable to stop staring. “Are you looking for somebody?”

Yeah, there should have been a _your Highness_ in there. Or maybe _my liege_. Or something. Was he supposed to kneel? It was just too surreal to process -being there, in the middle of his work, sweaty and dirty, and suddenly facing the prince. Heck, Loki was -stunning, up close. He was tall and stood straight and his face was sharp and pale, cheekbones sharp, eyes piercing. He looked too clean and his clothes too tight to even be in the forge. He didn't have the cape and helmet Tony was used to seeing him wearing at parades and events, but he did respect his typical color scheme: his leather coat, with its high collar and severe shoulders pads, was mostly black with a few brown accents, his gold gorget shining on the black leather that covered most of his torso. The edge of his tunic and sleeves were visible and both showing a rich green color the likes of which Tony had never seen anybody but royalty wearing.

Which was why he was all the more confused when Loki, with his out of place accent and slicked back hair, replied:

“I suppose I am, yes. I was hoping to find an armor smith whose services I could purchase.”

Because, that was absurd. Royalty didn't pay. Royalty didn't come down here to order pieces. Heck, not even courtiers did. They either went to visit the expensive shops in the town, or they sent their order through men like Justin.

But there was no mistaking that this was _Loki_.

“I... am an armor smith, my Lord,” Tony answered, as confused as he was cautious.

Various thoughts of danger ran through his mind. He hadn't left his father in the best of terms, and he did often fear that consequences would come his way. But while Haward had friends in high places, there was no reason for a prince to show up. So what? Was this a set-up? But again -the _prince_!

“Loður”, the prince said, and clarified, maybe because Tony was staring still. “My name is Loður. I am visiting from the North and staying at the palace for a few weeks.” He sniffed, and cleared his throat: “I will not lie; what I am hoping to purchase is going to be quite complicated and my expectations are as high as my price will be. I need the best armor smith you can point me to.”

He was lying, Tony thought, bizarrely shocked. Prince Loki _was_ a liar: the prince, the god of them, they called him. But still; what could be the point of lying to a smith? And so poorly, too? What could he want, coming here without an entourage and giving a fake name?

Then it occurred to him, that he was using a fake name too. And that most smiths in the forge had never seen the princes upclose, not enough to recognise their face, not enough to figure out by the expensive look of their clothes whether they really were a visiting noble or not. It had been Edvard Þoni Hawardson who had been sitting in a front seat at those boring parades -not Tony Stark.

It wasn't a poor lie. It would have been perfect, had it been for anyone else.

“Lord Loður, then”, he said, affecting a smirk he only half believed in, “I'm pleased to say, you came at the right time. I'm the one you're looking for. Tony Stark, at your service.”

“Stark,” Loki repeated, and hearing that invented name rolling on that sharp tongue did weird things to Tony. “I don't think I ever heard that name before.”

“Well, you'll hear it again, my Lord. All the way up to the North, and soon. Now, before my order book fills up, what can I forge for you?”

He had always been a big mouth, playing more confident than he was and holding some control over his life by not taking it seriously. He half expected this time to be the time too much, the brag that would get him thrown in jail or at the very least laughed at by the prince, who would get him thrown out of his job for his arrogance.

Loki didn't laugh. He looked at Tony, seemingly sizing him up. He sniffed again, then gave an impressed little nod.

“I have a sketch of it here. Let me show you”, he said.

* * *

What Loki wanted was, indeed, very complicated. In fact, Tony wasn't sure he had ever dared to build anything so delicate.

Which, actually, made him feel pretty excited about the project. Nearly enough to forget that he was talking with literal royalty and risking one hel of a punishment if his lèse-majesté was to be discovered. Nearly.

Loki made it weirdly easy to be around him, still. He didn't fit in the forge in the slightest bit, that was still a fact. Even without his rich, smooth voice forming words in ways Tony had long forgotten, even without his expensive clothes, it was in the way he stood so straight, and the paleness of his hands held together when he was distracted by something. This man was not of the kind that was meant to sweat over a smith fire or to tire his back by working late into the night. Tony had been born into a noble family. Loki was a noble.

Still, it wasn't like he was stuck up. He sniffled a lot, but Tony didn't think it was a disdainful sneer. Surprisingly, he was moving around the forge comfortably, looking at tools with curious eyes. Once the piece had been discussed and Tony was wondering what price he could demand from the prince of the realm, Loki seemed to wait without any worry, walking around the bench and asking Tony about the blue and green flames in the ovens and about the dagger he had been sculpting -and actually listening to the answers like he cared to understand them.

Prince Loki was big on daggers, everyone knew that. They said he was the one man in the whole armies of Asgard who used them instead of more conventional weapons. They did say it was because Prince Loki was a coward who struck his enemies in the back, but Tony, having never set foot on a battlefield, wasn't inclined to judge the way fighters chose to kill their enemies.

He was more inclined to wondering if Loki would show any interest in the dagger he was forging right now. Any confirmation that the blade was good enough to strike his fancy would be a mighty honor.

“It does look like a Dragonfang,” the prince said simply, pensively.

“It's far from over. I was thinking of ebony for the hilt, with silver thread.”

“Make it gold,” Loki suggested. Or ordered? It was hard to decide, and harder to figure out how to answer the incognito royal. Tony couldn't let himself hesitate for long, so he came back to the matter at hand:

“I'll need two, maybe three weeks to finish your order. And I will have to purchase the metal. I'm not exactly keeping any spare of that kind of things around.”

“So what price do you think would be fair?”

“Erm,” Tony said. Oh, this was hard. Did Loki actually know what a fair price was? Was he of the nobles who spent fortunes without a blink, or of those who watched every bronze coin to make sure they weren't being stolen from? An order from a royal. Tony could cut one year out of his work in this damned forge with a fair price. He breathed in before admitting: “I'm thinking one hundred twenty red gold, my Lord.”

“No more than that?” The prince asked, turning his eyes from the dagger to Tony. God, those eyes really looked straight into your soul, uh? And that smile -he looked so -so... mischievious. Playful. Like a cat, preparing to pounce on an unsuspecting little bird. “For the best armor smith there is?”

“Uh,” Tony said.

“I have high expectations,” Loki continued. “This will need to be _perfect_.”

“Yes.”

“If it is not, I will be sorely disappointed.”

Tony's throat went very dry, and all he could manage was a little “mh” as Loki looked right into his eyes.

“If it is as I described you, though... Then you'll have one thousand red gold to your name, Tony Stark. And some high-placed recognition, I believe.”

“Ah.” Wow, where did his words went? Right, they sank into his stomach with the words _one thousand_. Damn. That was close to ten years of work. That was- insane.

“Are you up to the task?” Loki asked.

“Yes, my Lord”, Tony replied quickly before he could allow a single thought in his brain to carry in any doubt.

“Excellent,” Loki smiled, and then he frowned, and squinted, and his nose wrinkled -and he sneezed. Hard.

That broke every instant of the tension that Tony had felt building up into him, for some reason. The instant Loki's eyes, so wild and green, weren't into his, he could remember that he was Tony freaking Stark. He could remember that he could do this, and that this man, this _prince_, who was sneezing like any other person, would be as impressed as he should be by his skills. He handed over his own handkerchief to the prince, adding some new layer to his lèse-majesté, and smiled as Loki blinked, then took it, and blew his nose. It was adorably pink when he was done. Why should Tony be intimidated by this guy? He extended a hand, tan and dirty, to the prince. Loki, looking a little embarrassed, shook it in his long pale fingers.

* * *

That had been their first meeting. It had kept Tony awake for some part of the night, half convinced it hadn't happened. One month earlier, he had been taking it as an enormous victory to have sold a pair of elegant armbraces to one lady archer Hloeja on a spontaneous bit of seduction. And now, he had an order from the second prince.

He had not expected to see the prince in his workshop again, not before the delivery date, or at least a full week. Loki had left after they had agreed on their contract, and none of the other workers had seemed to recognise who the nobleman who had just left was. When Hammer came back to the job on the next day, he asked Tony what had happened, and he was pleased to tell him exactly what Loki's version was.

“You're not supposed to use the forge for personal projects, Stark, you know,” his supervisor said with a whine of sympathy in his voice. “What would King Odin say if he knew his workers had enough time to take on private orders?”

“I know, I know,” Tony said, playing humble. It was not his best role, but Justin was usually too self-absorbed to notice that. “But you know I can use the money, master Hammer.”

“Hammer-Master,” Justin corrected, flushing a little. “And don't get so familiar.”

“I'm so sorry. What I mean is -I'll pay for every lump of coal I use in here, sir. I promise you that. Maybe I can stay later, outside of paid time, to make sure that everything gets done in time.”

That did it, of course. Hammer had no interest working in the forge -for all Tony knew, he had never worked metal in his life. All he cared about was climbing up the ladder and impressing everyone else. The opportunity to let Tony work alone without having to bother coming around was a golden one. He accepted.

No sooner than the next day, during another lunch break Tony had forgotten about once more, the prince came back. He came in without a sound, and Tony could only guess how long he had stayed there, silently watching while Tony traced shapes into leather, bent over his work in concentration. When he did turn around to grab a small-headed burin, he actually jumped from the ground.

“Shit! Don't you... I mean, I didn't hear you, you could -have made some noise or something!”

Yeah, he probably wasn't supposed to talk that way to the prince. And it was Loki, once more, no doubt about that, standing at the door with one hand above his head resting on the wooden frame, like he had been chilling for a while already.

He did smile, though. Apparently, he didn't mind rude words.

“Sorry,” he said. “I wondered how long it would take. You looked very absorbed by your work.”

“I was,” Tony replied, shaking his head. “I'm making the inside shape of your project, actually. Which -if I had messed it up, you could only have blamed yourself, by the way.”

Loki, amazingly, burst out laughing at that, seeming as surprised as he was amused by the daring reproach. Tony allowed himself to smile back and believe that he wasn't going to be beheaded for this. Also, for someone whose words always sounded like they were being sculpted carefully by his tongue, Loki's laugh was an amusingly adorable little sound, a cute little “eheheh”.

“Ah, that's fair, that's fair,” Loki said when he could speak again, giving a little cough. “I'm glad we avoided that scenario, then. How are you progressing?”

“Well -it's only been two days,” Tony said. “I didn't expect you to come back so soon. But -good enough, my lord. Do you want to take a look?”

“No, I trust you to work your magic. I just wanted to make sure that you had everything you needed.”

“I ordered the pieces of uru I'll need,” Tony replied truthfully, “but I admit, I'd be grateful if you could pay that part upfront. I don't need the money right away-”

“It'll be here tomorrow,” Loki replied, before sniffling audibly. “What sort of leather are you using?”

“Ice dragon. Not the most prized on the market, because it tends to wrinkle when it makes it out of Jötunheim and into our climates, but if treated, it can be as tough as any other dragon's, with the added bonus of keeping the body temperature low. I thought that could be nice for that adventurer friend of yours. Warriors sweat enough fighting without cooking in their armors, I was told.”

“Most thoughtful,” Loki said with a sage little nod. “He should, I hope, appreciate it. Where did you learn your craft, Mr. Stark?”

“Here and there,” Tony replied truthfully, still wondering what the prince (hey, again for the braincells in the back who were starting to get out of their bewilderment: the _freaking_ prince) could care about the details of forging, beyond the specifics of his order. “Books and friends.”

“You didn't have an apprenticeship?”

“A five years one, here in the palace, my lord. I'm just done with it.”

“Yet you claim more experience and knowledge than that. How so? You are quite young.”

It was kind of a bilgesnipe telling a night troll it was ugly; Loki was a thousand and some. No more than eleven centuries, for sure, and certainly not much older than Tony. Then again, noblefolks often treated the commoners like they were children, no matter their age, which had never struck Tony so much as when he had started to be a commoner himself. Loki's question didn't sound so much disdainful as actually curious, though, and he did wonder how to best answer it, as truthfully as possible, without giving away his borrowed status.

“I learn fast,” he said finally, with a small shrug. “I don't have the practice some of the older forgers have, it's true. But I have steady hands, and I don't forget the things I learn, and I make bridges between those things. Connections some people don't seem to see. I had to learn by myself, and that meant I had to be serious about it.”

“A self-made man,” Loki said. He made it sound like a suggestion, almost a question. But when Tony looked up at him, he saw him pinching his nose and nearly slam his face into the doorframe as he stiffled a sneeze.

“Do you maybe have a cold, my lord?” Tony asked, trying to hide a smile.

“I don't get _colds_,” the prince replied, and it was the first Tony heard him sounding actually a little royal and stuck-up. “It's, ah. Nothing.”

“You shouldn't pinch your nose. My mother used to say you could blow your eyes out of your skull if you did that.”

“I'm fine,” Loki groaned, waving a hand at him in a clear dismissal of the subject at hand. “So, you learned alone. Why? No master to hire you?”

That was less fun, as far as topics went. Talking about his past -yeah. Fortunately, Tony's hesitation was hidden from Loki by the prince blowing his nose into a square of fabric that looked more expensive than Maria's precious tableclothes. And that guy wanted to pretend to be just _some_ noble.

“Forging wasn't quite the sort of craft my father had in mind for me,” he said finally. “I had to manage outside of the traditional path.”

“I see,” Loki said, softly, like he really did. He did not meet Tony's eyes, though, to confirm or deny that this was more than a polite answer. “Perhaps it is a good thing. Learning by yourself. Sometimes, masters keep their secrets jealously, or they tarnish the craft with their idea of it. In a way, you make yourself a forger the likes of which Asgard has perhaps not ever seen.”

“That's not an unpleasant thought, lord Loður,” Tony answered, feeling flattered and intrigued both by the seriousness of the prince's tone. “Are you learning any craft of your own?” He added, curiously.

Of course, noblemen didn't need apprenticeships, and princes certainly wouldn't be expected to dirty their hands in any shop or workplace. But it wasn't uncommon either for people of the higher classes to develop a 'talent' of some sort, usually of the artistic kind, to keep themselves busy and receive praise for their mediocre-to-acceptable skills. Tony's cousin Sigrid had bothered the entire family at every Ostara and Freyfest party with his terrible lyre performances; his own mother had taken great pride in cooking at least a meal a week with her own two hands, serving the poorly cooked meat and charred bread while insisting any praise should really go to the servants for teaching her the craft. It was terrible and embarrassing, but at least it was the one thing on which Tony and Haward had agreed when Maria had still been alive: every week, they pretended that the meal was edible, and thanked her for it.

It didn't feel unlikely that a prince, somewhere between duties and parades, would have the time and privilege to learn some fancy art or pick up an interest for foreign language, maybe. It still came as a surprise to hear the answer.

“Of some sort,” Loki said. “I'm studying seiðr.”

Tony blinked and looked up, wondering if this was a joke. Loki wasn't looking at him, though. He was eyeing a piece of paper covered in designs for the hilt of a sword. Well, he thought, there were rumors. Some said that the second prince was indeed a strange, feminine thing who did sorcery. Supposedly, soldiers had seen him in campaigns making his tent warm and comfortable when everything else was wet and cold, and suggested it was magic, and they had seen him being in two or three places at the same time. Tony did remember a banquet where the Lord Aegir had been his father's guest, and how, after a few tankards of mead had been emptied, the Sea God had complained about Queen Frigga teaching her boys to be soft, and how the younger prince would start wearing dresses and tossing runes if nobody fixed him up before it was too late.

Well, Loki sure wasn't wearing a dress now, and Tony was more inclined to thinking that soldiers would want to see royalty enough to imagine it in two places at once than to picture the prince making doubles of himself around a military camp. But -well. The prince had just said it himself, hadn't he?

“That's quite amazing,” Tony said, cocking his head to the side. “I've always admired it. How my mother could just write a rune on my scrapped knees to heal it, or light a fire by blowing at the wood. Are you any good at it?”

“Some,” Loki replied flatly, looking up from the parchment. His eyes still seemed to search, to study something, Tony himself, perhaps, but he didn't comment on what he had found, instead going back to the forgotten deal: “I'll bring you one hundred coins tomorrow. It should cover up the cost of the dragonskin and uru, I believe?”

“More than comfortably, my lord,” Tony said. But he was a fool, and an unreasonable one at that, and so he pretended he hadn't picked up the hint. “What is it that you do? Runecraft or spellwork?”

Loki's hand closed where it had been about to let the parchment down. He had been preparing to leave, and Tony's interruption, no doubt, had been unexpected. His eyes were startled, white showing all around the brightness of his irises. White and pink, actually. His tear ducts were shiny. Had the prince -was he _crying_?

“Both,” Loki said after a pause. His voice sounded rough, too. “Neither is encouraged in my family. Like you, I am learning all that I can.”

“I know a few witches in the city,” Tony said, perhaps a bit too fast, perhaps a bit too nervously. He didn't know what to do with emotions. “They're good ladies. They would support you doing your thing. If you need books or anything, I can ask them for you. Nobody needs to know, right? You're only down here meeting a worker about some order of yours. I can get you some magical stuff. Herbs, or... Whatever your kind of seiðr requires.”

“I have my ways of obtaining tools,” Loki said, and sniffled, and smiled. His eyes still shined with the warm lights of the forge, but his face was peaceful, belying his hoarse voice. “But that is very generous of you. Not all are so understanding with such devious passions.”

“The way I see it, sorcery is no more wicked than a knife. It's only devious if it's used in a devious way.”

“So says a blade forger.” Loki grinned at him, this time, with a mischievious glint to it.

“Well, devious ways are keeping my job alive,” Tony said, unsure what was going on, but deciding he liked Loki's smile. Being near him, smiling back, felt a little like dancing with fire, taking risks he couldn't measure yet; but Tony had always felt most at home surrounded by flames, and he had had enough of taking the safe path lately. “If the good guys can't use the wicked tools, then don't the villains always have the advantage?”

“Is the world made of good and evil, then?”

“It sure is, in my idea. My clever addition is that nobody's stuck in one role. Anybody can be good or evil, and they can definitely be both.”

“Do you think of those things alone in the forge?”

“I also think a lot in the shower, my lord.”

Loki laughed. His eyes were bright still, but his laugh was clearer, that cute little 'eheheh!' turned louder, taking more space in the forge. It was a charming noise, making the whole room more alive, the way Loki's order made the job much more interesting. Tony wished he would never leave.

He did, of course, eventually. When the other workers came back from their break, and the noise in the workshop became an obstacle to conversation, Loki left.

But he was back the next day, bringing Tony his coins. And again, he stayed, for much longer than it would have taken to accomplish this simple task.

And the day after that, too. Then he said that he had another idea for the design of his project, and he wanted to know if it was still possible for Tony to incorporate it. He stayed while Tony drew sketches and patterns, and he left later than on the first three days, as the afternoon was well advanced.

Tony waited for him on the fifth day. He was not disappointed.

Although, he did feel just a little bit of worry when Loki made it in. His face, which was so pale and sharp, showed red spots and squinted eyes more surely than anybody else's would have. In the last few days, Loki had always had his eyes red when he was leaving the workshop. Tony had started to grow protective of it, wondering what sort of strain and pressure the prince was going through that made him cry on a daily basis with his head held high like everything was fine. But to see him coming in the forge looking already so sad was enough to make him worry.

“Hey, Loður”, he said, because it had taken nothing more than four days for Loki to let him use his -fake- first name. “I just finished a big job and I'm celebrating with some booze. You want in?”

It was more or less true. He had purchased a fresh bottle of blue mead earlier this morning, planning to finish the work week by sharing the drink with Loki. He sat by the fireside, tapping the stone next to him to invite the prince to join him.

“I'm not supposed to drink with commoners. You could be trying to poison me,” Loki remarked seriously, though Tony was starting to know him well enough to be pretty sure that one bit was just a joke. He did seem to hesitate about sitting, though.

“And yet, you and I live dangerously,” he replied. “I'll let you open the bottle.”

“The poison could be in the cup.”

“You can examine either the bottle or the cup. Not both. Embrace the danger.”

Loki smirked, glancing at the fire, and then, finally, moving in next to Tony. He didn't look at either the cup nor the bottle, simply letting Tony pour him a measure of mead before raising his cup with him. He licked his lips after drinking, not entirely managing to hide the shiver that the strenght of the mead gave him.

“Mighty, uh? There's some kind of mushrooms in there, on top of the rotten honey. It's stronger than it looks. I figured it would fit us both.”

“You are very presomptuous and entirely deprived of poetic talent. Nobody would want to drink this thing if you described it to them first.”

“What would you call it?”

“Kvasir's blood, seasoned with the very earth's fruits.”

“Fungi are more rot than fruits, as I recall.”

“Who's the witch, of us both? I learned the rules. I get to break them.”

Tony smiled, reassured to find Loki as talkative as he had been in the last few days. He still struggled to believe it, that he was casually chatting in his workshop with the prince of the realm every other afternoon; it kept him awake at night, if he stopped to think about it, wondering if he was making this entire thing up in a grand fantasy of glory and routine-breaking. But whenever Loki did show up, tall and noble and clean, and articulate and strange and curious, Tony's every doubts went away. There was no pretending that this was not, in fact, the prince. And yet -he was more comfortable to be around than anyone Tony had known since he had left his father's halls. Like an old friend, though he had known him but for a few days and pretended not to know his name.

“You look tired,” he suggested, affecting a casual tone. “Are you getting enough sleep, up there in the golden castle?”

“Terrible. I toss and turn in duvet pillows, fur covers and silk sheets. You cannot imagine what sort of hell I'm going through, night after night.”

“You poor soul.” Loki was acting casual right back at him, that snake. He clarified, not leaving any exit door this time: “I mean it, though. You look a little sick. Are you alright?”

“I am,” Loki said, and proved his point by sniffling like a svartalfr with a skooma problem.

Tony frowned, his concern only growing. It was silly, perhaps. Loki was right to point out that his situation was not a bad one; he could imagine the prince would have access to the best healers in the kingdom if his health was actually threatened. But Tony was more worried that Loki was going through something he couldn't fix with a visit to the Lady Eir.

In the last few days, as Loki grew more comfortable around him, and perhaps more confident in his anonimity, Tony had started to understand more and more delicate things about the royal family's dynamics. Loki had never spoken of the king, queen or heir to the throne directly, always speaking of his family as a general entity, and not seeming to realise that it made it all the more evident to one listening carefully that he didn't feel like he _belonged_ to the golden circle of his family. The way he mirrored Tony's words, too, and evidently related, both by word and by smile, to his story, told him enough. Maybe it was just the magic. Maybe it was bigger than that. But Loki was lonely, even surrounded by his people.

Was it getting to him? Was he breaking down, right at the moment, behind his fair facade? Was Tony the only being in Asgard who saw him like this, with tears breaking through his sharp green eyes?

But what could he do? He was just a forger, pretending he didn't know he was speaking to a prince. That was probably the only reason why Loki was letting his guard down here, wasn't it? And if Loki didn't want to tell him, then how could he help?

It was probably his duty as a servant of the royalty, on top of being a citizen of the realm, to take care of his prince's health. But while Tony had never cared much for duty, and certainly not for the sake of a monarchy that had -objectively- led the kingdom to a history of war after war, he found that he cared for Loki much more than that. The prince's cleverness, his curious eyes, his smart questions. His ideas, his laughter, his flawless hands demonstrating his skills with a dagger, his shining boots silently brushing against the dirty floor, his concentration when drawing the runes he wanted on his project.

He didn't want Loki to be hurt.

But maybe, he thought, maybe the place was still too exposed. Maybe Loki feared to be heard. Or maybe he didn't know Tony as well as Tony felt he knew him, yet. Maybe he didn't know if he could tell him how he felt. Maybe he didn't know that Tony cared to listen.

“Say, Loður,” he started, carefully. “Don't hesitate to get my head chopped off if I'm going too fast, but I'm free tomorrow. I can't work the uru at home, I don't have the tools, but I was thinking I would sew the stones into the leather. You're more than welcome to join me, if you want to explain that pattern thing to me again. And, you know, if you can handle a commoner's dirty place. Wouldn't want you to get used to my luxury and then sleep even worse when you get back to the castle.”

Loki gave him a _look_. The small voice that advised Tony, usually late, about his bad choices, was screaming. Seconds trailed by slowly.

The prince smirked.

“You _are_ going very fast,” he said. “And without a chaperone? Whatever will the people say?”

“Nothing, if you get yourself a dirty cloak. I never knew how to tell you this, dear lord, but you sort of shine in the dark with all that gold on you.”

* * *

Loki did come to Tony's place, on the next day. He discovered the small two-rooms apartment with the eyes of a traveller in a new land, not wanting to let on that this was all foreign to him, yet obviously wondering at everything he saw. Tony offered him soup, his mother's recipe, the only thing she used to cook properly, and a memory he treasured.

It didn't make Loki feel like telling him about his life, but he didn't cry that day.

In fact, he laughed, moreso than anytime before. He joked with Tony, and teased, and dropped some of the formality that he seemed to usually be wearing like a stiff coat around him, sounding for the first time like a young man who was barely a thousand years old as he spoke of teachers and military time and pranks he had pulled on his brother's friends. He made himself comfortable on Tony's couch and ate his soup and talked about how in some realms people wore pants made of fabric instead of leather that were way more comfortable and this proved that Asgard was not as advanced as she liked to think. They played tafl and discussed the way Tony should engrave runes, and the afternoon went by like an hour, with Loki eventually startling up when he looked up searching for a lamp and found the windows had gone dark with the falling night.

“I have to run,” he excused himself immediately, jumping from the couch to quickly put his boots back on. “I might already be late for dinner and we have guests tonight. I mean -we _are_ guests tonight,” he added after a brief, startled pause, seeming to remember what role he had played with Tony thus far. “This is the whole reason my family came to Asgardia. I couldn't miss...”

“Highness,” Tony interrupted, scooting to the edge of the couch as Loki froze like a rabbit facing a hunter. “Take the back door and the stairs, you'll get back to the main street faster. It's cool. I can't imagine Odinking being anything less than strict.”

“W-what -I am not... How have you...” Loki shut his mouth, eyes blown wide with a disbelief that kept him hesitating an instant longer between the door and staying for clarifications. “We'll -you mustn't speak of this to anyone,” he ordered, tensed.

“I haven't, and I won't,” Tony replied with a placating hand gesture, watching Loki's gestures very carefully. “Don't freak out. Just -don't feel like you have to lie to _me_. It's cool,” he insisted, resisting the urge to add 'right?' to make sure he wasn't about to be arrested or something.

Loki stared back at him, obviously shell-shocked that anybody could have seen through his story. But the urgency of the situation, as Tony had hoped, didn't allow him to demand better answers, or worry further about it. It seemed to genuinely concern him, and he was tense as he glanced at the door, and back at Tony, but he eventually gave a small, resolute nod.

“We'll speak of this again,” he said simply, and then he was adjusting his collar and rushing through the door.

* * *

They did, in fact, speak of it again, and no later than on the next day, either, when Loki showed up at his door without a warning, but arguably without giving Tony the time to worry too much about his poor life choices. The prince presented himself in the most sober clothes Tony had yet seen on him, completely black with nothing but bronze accents at his boots, wrists and belts. It actually made him smile.

“You know, lots of non-royals gods dress way more obnoxiously than you. It wasn't what gave you away,” Tony told him in lieu of welcome.

“Then what was it?” Loki asked, with the tension of a bowstring about to be released, not smiling.

“Come on in. Want a drink?”

Loki followed in, and sat just in the same spot of the couch that he had taken on the previous day. He was evidently unnerved, and his eyes were dark with lack of sleep, but he didn't seem worried; just angry, and looking for answers. It didn't surprise Tony that failing to understand something would drive the prince mad. He sat in front of him, his stomach doing little unpleasant, twisty things.

“I don't want to drink. Tell me what made you recognise me.”

“Well, your order, for a thing,” Tony started, honest but careful. He had never seen Loki making any gesture of violence yet, but when all you had to do was snap your fingers to kill someone with magic -or something-, it didn't take much demonstration to be intimidating. “Armbraces for someone with wrists way thicker than yours, who prefers warhammers and needs something made of uru to last him. Someone you'd be close enough to to spend a thousand coins on, and care enough for to make me engrave magical protection where he wouldn't see them.”

“Thor is hardly the only man in the realm using a hammer as his weapon of choice,” Loki articulated slowly.

“True. But it became way more fashionable since he got Mjölnir, and you asked for designs that would fit his usual regalia.”

“Those are barely more than hints,” Loki said, a bit drily. “You couldn't have figured it out like this. What was it? Who told you?”

“Hey, let's not get nervous, Highness. You don't need to freak out. I'm not your enemy-”

“I'll decide of that myself,” Loki said, stubbornly, but without entirely hiding his nervosity. “And do not call me _that_.”

“Come on. We drank together, we talked together. Can't you tell that I'm not the assassin type?”

“Stark. Give me an answer.”

He was so obviously tense, and it made Tony sigh. Poor prince, he thought, not for the first time. Was he scared, on top of this still unexplained sadness? Did he fear for his life? Or did he fear, more simply, that people would try to get his friendship, his favor, for other purposes? What was it that made him so angry and so afraid that someone he had seemed to consider as a friend was aware of his rank?

“Alright,” Tony said, breathing in. “Well, _Stark_. That's most of your answer. It's not a real name.”

“Go on,” Loki ordered, eyes squinting. But dry. Free of any tear.

“I'm Edvard, son of Haward, son of Isak, of the Starkkar Halls, up in the North,” Tony enunciated reluctantly. “I used to follow along when my father came to Asgardia to preen and make important friends. I've seen you before, close enough to recognise you.”

“Edvard,” Loki repeated, watching him intently. “Of Starkkar.”

“Yeah. You might remember Haward being rich because of his trades with the Oakenshield dwarves. He was rich, he had fought and been honored, and he simply cared to be more rich and more honorable. He wanted me to be of the same stuck-up noblestuff as him. I couldn't do it, so I left.” He shrugged, trying to sound relaxed about it. “It just happened that I saw you, and I immediately knew.”

“You didn't say anything _then_.”

“Yeah. You didn't want to be recognised. I figured it was pretty clever, actually. Loður. Life-fire. To come into a forge. It was fitting.”

“So why admit that you know?” Loki insisted, arms folded. “You could have kept pretending.”

“Well,” Tony said, toying with a leather punch he had picked up on his table. “I thought maybe you would feel more comfortable with me if you knew I knew. I can be exhausting, keeping a facade. I would know. I'm still half scared that my father will find me and drag me back to the mountains to turn me into a proper society man.”

Loki frowned, but it was hard to say what kind of Tony's speech was displeasing him. He kept staring, unnervingly so, studying Tony with the same attention he had given to his metal work before.

“How would it make me feel comfortable to learn that you've been exposed?”

Ah.

“Well, not that bit,” Tony argued. “But -it was just the two of us, right? And I thought you were growing fond of me, too. Sorry if that's blasphemous, it's just -you kept showing up, so I figured you had to like me at least a little. And besides,” he added, licking his lips and trying to keep up that particular brand of Stark bravery that would probably kill him someday, “I was concerned for you, you know. I thought if you knew I knew, you might feel more inclined to talk to me about it.”

“About... What?” Loki questioned, detaching his syllables and looking at Tony attentively.

“You've been looking pretty upset, since I met you. I don't mean the part when you complained about dining etiquette or anything, I mean... You know. When you were... In the workshop. When you cried.”

The silence that followed the C-word was dizzying. Loki's vivid green eyes scanned him, his face unreadable.

“When I cried,” he repeated.

“I noticed,” Tony shrugged, feeling nervous. “It's what I do, apparently. I notice things that I shouldn't. But look -we don't have to talk about it. It's okay. Everybody's got stuff they're fighting with. Some people can hide it, others can't, but there's no shame-”

“You thought I was crying,” Loki interrupted. “That is why you invited me here. Why you were so kind.”

“It wasn't! It's not -pity or anything, Loki -Highness- my Lord. It had nothing to do with it. I invited you because I thought you were funny and I wanted to keep talking -and okay, yes, I was concerned too, and I thought that maybe you had trouble with the king, and you didn't know who to tell about it-”

“Tony,” Loki chided in again, and it startled Tony into some strange sort of relief to hear his own name spoken by the prince, after all this. “I wasn't _crying_. At no point this week did I cry in your workshop.”

“Um,” Tony replied, unsure whether to accept that version of the story if it was the one Loki wanted to go with, but he didn't have time to make a choice before Loki spoke, seeming half-disbelieving, half... Was he smiling?

“It's the combustible,” he said. “The sort of coal you're using in your forge. I'm reacting to it. I _thought_ you weren't noticing, or I would have said something. It took me a few days to understand that _it_ was the source of my unease. I'd started by believing that it was the sort of leather you were using.”

“Wait, wait,” Tony said, and yes, Loki was most definitely smiling now. “I thought -I didn't say a _thing_ because I thought you were tough-crying, and you were sniffling all the time because you're _allergic_ to my coal? We could have -we could literally just have gone to the break room! Or I could have used some other coal-”

“I had no justification to being in the room in the first place, day after day. It felt far-fetched to interrupt you on top of it,” Loki shrugged, spreading his hands lightly. “After you had invited me here, I was thinking of telling you, or making it so that we would meet after your work, but I was still undecided about my approach when you called me _Highness_ yesterday and made me worry you were making reports to my father or being paid by my mother to be kind to me.”

“That's -I can't tell if that's more or less paranoid than I thought you would be, but- so you _did_ want to meet with me, it wasn't all about the armbraces!”

“Well, yes and no,” Loki said, now crossing his legs with an amused, smirking little look to him. “It was about the armbraces. The ones you gave to me last month. They made me want to learn more about you.”

“The ones I...”

It struck him; the lady Hloeja, a tall, though archer walking through the marketplace, alone and proud and having fun. She had seemed amused by Tony's flirting, but not in a dismissive way; indeed, it had been obvious that she had been quite flattered, and when Tony had shown her his latest piece, the delicate armbraces that would so wonderfully fit an archery prodigy such as herself, no doubt, and so for a reasonable price...

“You can turn into a woman,” he said, disbelieving, “and you showed up to the workshop as yourself, thinking nobody would recognise you.”

“I wasn't about to show up as a lady. People might have gotten the wrong idea,” Loki said as if it was evident. “And it would have been deception. I was far too impressed and intrigued by your style to start on those bases.”

“So you were looking... For me.”

“And for your skills. Thor's twelfth century is just around the corner. I do need to make a decent gift.”

“Where you planning to _tell me_ who you were?”

“I didn't,” Loki admitted, losing a bit of his smile. “I so hate to see clever people grovel and play submissive just because I am my father's son. That's no way to have a conversation. But,” he said, “evidently, you are not quite prosternating yourself yet.”

“You don't want me to, right?” Tony asked, just to be entirely sure.

“If you do, it should be for me. Not for my title,” Loki replied, with such seriousness it was very hard to decide if he was kidding. “And on that topic, I'd really prefer if you didn't call me Highness.”

“Is it bothering you?” Tony asked, almost before he could stop himself. And when Loki frowned, he found himself smiling. “Oh, so it does.”

“Have you truly no fear, at all, of authority? What sort of man are you?”

“The sort you like, obviously,” Tony beamed, and laughed as Loki seemed shocked. “Oh come on, you _do_. They say you're too precious to eat without utensils and you wear boots with soft wool soles, but you'd let yourself be sick to see _me_?”

“I am -who is _saying_ that about me? Do not be arrogant,” Loki protested, but he paused when Tony grinned at him in a victory look. “What? What is it?”

“See? You like me.”

“I have literally said nor done anything to make you believe that.”

“And yet,” Tony grinned. “I'm just that good at noticing things.”

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Allergy
> 
> Thank you all for reading! I feed mostly on comments and chocolate hazelnut, so don't hesitate to tell me what you think.


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